And quiet sleeps the don

n Chhota Rajan is on the decline and all his trusted men — Guru Satam, Ejaz Lakdawala, Ravi Pujari and Hemant Pujari — have abandoned him.

n Chhota Shakeel, Dawood Ibrahim’s Man Friday, has been quiet, literally. Shakeel does not even call — it is Fafum machmach, his understudy, who does the talking.

n After a decade of ‘‘encounters’’, the underworld network in the city is either decimated or lying low.. ‘‘I would not say the network is finished, but it has certainly shrunk,’’ says Singh.

Even the most cynical will agree. Visibility of organised crime in the city is far less than it was, say, a couple of years ago. While there were over 150 shootouts (by the underworld) in 1998-99, the number came down to 15 in 2000-01. Most of the killings recorded on the streets are by the police. They have killed over 250 gangsters in the past three years (see graphics). Insiders say the police now don’t wait for the crime, they just go for the kill once the gangster establishes a link with the mafia abroad.

In the battle with the underworld,the police now seems to have a decisive edge. Helped by technology — tapping telephones to track movements — a gutsy team of sharpshooters after the 93-blasts, the police went after the crime syndicates. It worked. The gangsters in Mumbai are on the run.

The early ’90s saw the police change their mode of operations. The Crime Branch officers say they had enough of the loopholes in the law which let gangsters out on bail. When Param Bir Singh, then deputy commissioner of police, came back to the city from Naxal-hit Gadchiroli, he formed a crack squad under Inspector Praful Bhosle. In over a year, 30 gangsters were shot by the squad.

Soon other special units were set up and other officers became the stars of the force — Bhosle, Vijay Salaskar, Pradeep Sharma, Ravindranath Angre, Daya Nayak, Avinash Sawant and Hemant Desai became encounter specialists (see accompanying story). With Mumbai’s top cop D. Sivanandhan heading the crime wing as Joint Commissioner and with the inclusion of then Assistant Commissioner Pradip Sawant, the crime branch became a fairly well-oiled machine.

‘‘It was a dream team. Suddenly the Crime Branch was rejuvenated and a whole lot of bold and daring junior officers were inducted into various units across the city,’’ says Param Bir Singh.

Technology too helped. While the underworld bosses ran their operations through phone — first landlines, then mobile and now satellite phones — the police began tapping their conversations to find who they were talking to and who their targets were.

Despite the police strikes, however, underworld activities peaked in 1997-98. More than 101 shootouts, sometimes as many as three a day, were recorded in one year. Daylight murders of mill-owner and builder Vallabh Thakkar and music baron Gulshan Kumar spread panic among the businessmen and the film world.

But within a year, the police seemed to get the upper hand. ‘‘Our seniors started trusting us. We were given a free hand and it was probably for the first time that secret funds were made available for paying informants,’’ says Inspector Angre, who claims to have shot 50-odd gangsters in seven years.

Efficient officers were placed in key posts and juniors with a clean record were transferred to the squads. ‘‘It was sheer team work, will and determination that led to success,’’ recalls Pradip Sawant, now a DCP heading the crime cell.

While the rates of arrests slipped, there was a steady rise in encounters by 1999. Gangsters began escaping from Mumbai as the police turned on the heat. Underworld operations began to show a dip by 2000, just about the time M.N. Singh took over as commissioner.

This is Singh’s second innings at the city police headquarters. The first was in the early ’90s as Joint Commissioner (crime). Singh says he can feel the difference — even within his force. ‘‘When I joined as JCP, I was advised to be cautious about the underworld,’’ he says. Singh would not say in as many words but several officers were hobnobbing with the underworld. Many were on its payroll. Some killings by the police were at the behest of the gangs. What was discussed in police meetings would reach the underworld before the officers reached home. There were no secrets — anywhere. ‘‘Underworld had penetrated into politics, business, cinema, the media and even the police,’’ Singh says.

The serial blasts of ’93 became a defining moment in the history of the underworld.

• Most of the remaining underworld fled India after the blasts.
• Chhota Rajan split from the Dawood Ibrahim gang, opening a floodgate of information (tips and counter-tips about the movement of gangsters) to the police and a chapter in internecine battles which led to a depletion in the ranks of both gangs.
• Peripheral operators in business and politics woke up to the ISI-underworld nexus and learnt that sleeping with the enemy was dangerous to them as well.
• Underworld lost its hold in the police — some officers were transferred, some dismissed and others felt the heat and opted out.

Commissioner Singh says the arrests of judge J.W. Singh — who allegedly was in touch with Shakeel — and film financier Bharat Shah were milestones. ‘‘It became clear that you were in trouble if you were with the underworld, however big you were,’’ says Singh.

Sub-Inspector Daya Nayak says the crackdown on the gangsters and their financiers like Shah immediately affected organised crime in the city. ‘‘People do not want to be associated with the underworld. Particularly after the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Acts was promulgated in 1999,’’ he says. Inspector Bhosle too agrees that it happened because the police have not only turned on the heat on the shooter, but the organiser as well. ‘‘The police will have to continue to exert pressure,’’ says Bhosle.

The rule of the hitman on the street may be over but the grip of the underworld on Mumbai is certainly not. As long as the dons are living abroad, they find ways to get the money out of Mumbai. Officers say that still industrialists and builders pay up readily, though many of them are now ready to report the extortion calls. A senior police officer talks about a Bollywood star who flew to Europe to pay Salem just before he was arrested. An officer who listened to a conversation between Shakeel and a businessman says he had to threaten him not to pay up.

Shivanandhan, now CBI’s joint director, and one of the men responsible for the underworld demolition job caution that although the network is almost finished, the underworld is still active. An investigator who has studied the sociology and economics of crime, Sivanandhan says the underworld changes its methods according to government policies.

Sianandhan’s legacy was carried forward by B.S. Mohite. The current Jt CP (crime) Shridhar Vagal has seen more than a dozen encounters after he took charge early this year. He attributes the reduced visibility of crime to the changing pattern — first the prime operations were bootlegging and smuggling but they became less lucrative when foreign goods became available. Gold was the next option and changed laws forced the underworld to look around for other options. With film and real estate markets crashing, and extortion options limited, they now give cover to international drug syndicates.

There are more than 50 members of each gang in prisons in the state. Yet some of them are operating with the help of mobile phones. ‘‘The crime chart moves likes the share bazaar — there are ups and down. While the police are resting on their laurels, the gangs could be regrouping,’’ warns Inspector Salaskar.

They know the gangs always find ways to outsmart them. When they find it tough to recruit from within Mumbai, they get shooters from UP and Bihar. These gangsters don’t exist in Mumbai’s police records, they come, kill and disappear. Commissioner Singh himself interrogated Upendra Nath Singh alias Guddu the shooter hired by Salem to kill Ajit Diwane, Manisha Koirala’s secretary.

Guddu had gone to jail after a shootout in Allahabad University and met someone who gave him a phone number for a ‘‘job’’. When he came out, he dialled the number, got Salem on the line and the contract to kill Diwane. ‘‘As long as the socio-economic problems — and communalism — that lead to crime exist, there can be no definite end to organised crime,’’ Singh says.